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Editorial

Disheartening milestone

A year ago, ‘Dispatch’ looked into allegations of school data-fixing

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Wednesday June 19, 2013 5:36 AM

What an unhappy anniversary for Columbus City Schools and anyone concerned about the well-being
of the children depending on them for an education.

When
The Dispatch first reported last June 15 that student-attendance data had been altered, in
a way that might have artificially improved state report-card ratings, who imagined that a year
later, new revelations still would be forthcoming about the many ways in which the truth was buried
and children were shortchanged?

Certainly, when Ohio Auditor Dave Yost began his probe of the allegations in late June, few
could have guessed he still would be at it a year hence, with no end in sight.

As grim as the picture is now, a good outcome can be envisioned, thanks in large part to the
outpouring of concern from a community that cares about the school district. Led by Mayor Michael
B. Coleman — who never was eager to get involved in the school district’s problems, but who has
embraced the responsibility wholeheartedly — civic and business leaders have asked the community
for input, put their heads together and proposed a bold plan for improvement.

The changes proposed in House Bill 167, co-sponsored by Republican Rep. Cheryl Grossman of Grove
City and Democratic Rep. Tracy Heard of Columbus, have the potential to break through the
bureaucratic inertia that has stifled real progress in Columbus and other urban districts for so
long.

But the full, ugly truth of data-cheating by adults, and the harm it has done to kids, still
hasn’t been uncovered fully.

A fresh start for the district requires a clean slate.

The recent revelations by a retired supervisor of school social workers, who tried to share with
her bosses her alarm about obviously disordered student records, are stunning.

One boy, who improved his attendance after a Franklin County magistrate warned he’d be taken
from his home, was accused again by the court of truancy. School officials had marked him as
withdrawn from school, even as he attended. This meant they didn’t have to count his poor
standardized-test score, bettering the school’s state rankings.

Huenke also reported to her supervisor, chief officer of Support Services Mary Ey, that one high
school reported that 94 students — a tenth of its student body — had moved outside central
Ohio.

Huenke says Ey repeatedly brushed off her concerns, at one point saying she wouldn’t talk about
the data changes, and at another, ordering Huenke to focus on other reports instead.

Worst of all, Huenke tells of a girl who, as a senior, was eligible for a program that allows
students to graduate even without having passed the Ohio Graduation Test, but was bounced from the
program because school records falsely indicated that she had withdrawn for a month during her
sophomore year.

These are horror stories: adults cheating in ways to make their own performance look better (and
possibly win themselves bonuses), heedless of the fact that the children they’re supposed to serve
were being harmed.

As long and painful as the process has been, it’s important that Yost’s investigation, as well
as others under way by the FBI and Franklin County Prosecutor Ron O’Brien’s office, be thorough, so
that this cancer on the school district can be excised completely.